Romance is dead
by Angel Sacrifice
Summary: An alternative 'Gigashadow' ie. what happens if Stan was just that tiny bit more cowardly. Zev/Kai, but definitely not in the usual way...


Please read and review!  
  
A/N - Do not read this fic unless you have seen Gigashadow (last one in the 1st series of 4 longer episodes) because not only will most of this make no sense, it basically follows most of the plot of that episode (except all the Feppo and Smoor bits that I really couldn't work into the story) and therefore is one big Spoiler. This is the story of what might have happened if Stanley hadn't had *that* dream where he fully realises his cowardice.  
  
This is also my reaction against the 99% of Lexx fics where Kai gets his feelings back/comes back to life and falls in love with Zev (or Xev), which is ok in some cases, but really... something original wouldn't hurt... hence my story is kind of the reverse *evil grin*  
  
  
  
Who said romance was dead?  
  
"I dont want to live." said Zev, tears in her eyes. "I never, wanted to live." Stan looked at her. Clearly she loved Kai a great deal, perhaps it would be a good idea to go back, if only because it could make her happy. But then, Kai was dead, even with more protoblood he would still be dead, only his corpse would remain animated for a little longer. Zev was kidding herself if she thought she could change that. Stan, on the other hand, was living, and if Zev just gave him the chance he could make her truly happy. He walked away to see if the Lexx could provide some comfort food. Zev went to the shower.  
  
About 2 hours later he went back to the controls. He was bored... maybe he ought to try another trick with Squish, maybe involving firey hoops or something. But then he reconsidered. It wasn't really a good idea - he tended not to trust anything that given half a chance would kill him and eat his brain. He listened... the water was still running? Well that was a pretty long shower, even for Zev. Maybe he should check that she hadn't just left the water running when she'd gotten out.  
  
On approaching the shower a feeling of dread overcame Stan, something like a premonition. He put his head around the door, and his worst fears were realised. There lay Zev under the running water, her body was curled up, her face turned away, her dress soaked in the pool of water mixed with blood. Blood! Stanley ran to turn off the water, and turned her over so she lay on her back. She had opened her wrists, the cuts were deep and still bled. Her face looked paler than her hair or dress, which probably had more blood in them now than she did.   
"Kai!" he called. "Kai, come here! It's Zev!" Stan lifted her body out, although it soaked his own clothes, and carried her out of the shower room. Unfortunately 790 was there and began to wail uncontrollably, shouting wild accusations at Stan. Kai approached.  
"Kai, please, you have to do something!" exclaimed Stan. "She's dying!" Kai lifted Zev's body from Stan. It was still warm from the hot water of the shower, but beneath that surface heat lay coldness. The gaping wounds still trickled blood and the skin seemed even paler than Kai's own, it was a sharp contrast to the blood all over her clothes. She wasn't breathing, and her heart was no longer beating.  
"Stan." said Kai. "She is not dying, she is dead."  
"No!" cried Stan and 790 in unision, expressing their unbearable sense of less. "Please Kai, don't say that, you have to get her to wake up!"  
"I... I cannot restore her life to her." said Kai. "Waking her up is possible, though."  
"How?" asked Stan. Then it dawned on him. "Oh, yeah! Protoblood! I totally forgot, you could give her some of that and she'd come back."  
"Not much of my own protoblood remains." Kai informed him. "Both she and I would have very little time. I recommend that since you have no desire to return to the Cluster, and we have no desire for anything, you continue on your journey and dispose of our corpses." Stan thought over this for a second, then he leapt up to the Lexx's controls.  
"Lexx, take us back through the fractal core!"   
"What are you doing?" asked Kai.   
"Look Kai," said Stan, "there is absolutely no way I'm going to be left all alone on this ship in the middle of space. Not now, not ever. I just indirectly killed the only living woman in the universe, and I'm not giving up the chance to get her back. And if I do this for her, she might be so grateful that she... well, she'll like me more anyway."  
"She will be dead." said Kai, and walked away. "Are you sure you wish to risk your life in this way?"  
"Yeah." said Stan. "I don't have much of a choice. Guys can go crazy alone in space, and even if I found a planet with life on it it'd be dangerous... I'm just one guy. I'm more afraid of being alone in the dark zone than I am of going back to the Cluster."  
Kai nodded, and walked away to the cryoroom, hoping to remain cool and preserve energy for when it would be needed later. Stan was left in the control room with the disturbing presence of Zev's dead body. Stupid Kai, he thought, if it hadn't been for Kai, Zev wouldn't have got into her state about going back to the Cluster for protoblood... it was... no it wasn't Kai's fault, it was his own. Guilt overcame Stan. They were going back to the Cluster now, true, but if he had only agreed to it before Zev would be alive now for company. He had refused from his own fear of dying, and caused Zev to kill herself. But what little he could do to sort this out now, he would do.  
  
There it was, the Cluster. Or what remained of it at least. Stan, Kai, 790 and Zevs body were all in the moth, Kai holding Zev so she wouldn't fall on Stan and be in the way, a strategy which failed when Kai felt his protoblood running low. Stan landed clumsily on a platform on the Cluster's surface. He and Kai got out, Kai carrying Zevs body. It was sweet, in a way, and also horribly sad. Kai laid her down gently on the ground near to where other bodies in purple robes lay. Then Kai spotted the brain on the ground. Squish grabbed a part of the brain, and the remaining part told Kai that its evil had been removed, leaving only the poet half. Kai did not entirely trust this, so he picked it up and claimed back the divine shadows memory from it. Unfortunately, he knew nothing of the Gigashadow either.  
  
They followed pipes which had once supplied Kai and others like him with protoblood. However, none remained now, and the tubes were dry. A man suddenly fell from above - Yatskry, who told them of how he had been half possesed by His Shadow. Stan, terrified by this, ran away, back up to where Zev lay... although now she sat up. She still possessed an eerie beauty in death. She screeched, a cluster lizard call, and Squish came to her. Then she gave him a tube of Protoblood she had filled, and threw him into the pit of the Gigashadow, where the doors where just beginning to close.  
"Find your mother." she instructed Squish.  
"Zev!" exclaimed Stan. "You're alive! Oh Zev I thought you were dead for sure!" Zev blinked, then looked at him solemnly.  
"Stanley." she said, in a voice unmistakeably hers, yet dull and flat. "I am dead."  
"Dead?" Stanley was unwilling to believe it, but he knew inside it was true. "But you're here, you're talking to me."  
"This on the floor is Protoblood." said Zev. "It awakened my body as I lay here. I sent the lizard to take some to Kai." Stan nodded, then went back to the moth, taking out the five vials he had packed and running back to Zev.  
"Here." he handed two to Zev. "Fill these with protoblood, you'll need it." Zev said nothing, but began to scoop the substance into the vials. Stan did the same. Another of the dead men from the rebirth ceremony rose and came towards them. Stan took his and Zevs vials back to the moth, and Zev fought the corpse, eventually punching it away for long enough to get back to the moth.  
"Zev!" called 790 as she returned. "You came back! After this scum tried to kil you." Stan glared at 790 as the moth took off.  
"I did not!" he said. "Zev, you forgive me, right?" Zev shrugged.   
"I do not recall feelings of forgiveness." she said. "But in the moments before I died I blamed noone. I felt... calm. I was glad that it was over.  
"But Zev my love, they weren't your last moments at all!" said 790. "You didn't die! Its a wonderful miracle!"  
"She did die." Stan informed the robot head. "She's a walking corpse now, like Kai is." The moth was suddenly shaken by explosions from the cluster.  
"But at least she's still here with me." said 790. "For that I am eternally happy. My love for you, Zev, will never die. Speaking of corpses..." 790 looked out the window.  
"It's Kai!" exclaimed Stan. "He made it! Bring him over!" They went to Kai. Then, with Kai holding on to the moth by his brace, they headed back to the Lexx.  
  
The Giga shadow now stood before them, and all attacks proved useless. They decided to turn and escape.  
"Through the fractal core." said Kai. "The Gigashadow's mass is too large to follow us."  
"Fractal core Lexx!" shouted Stan. "As fast as you can!"  
"As you command, Stan."  
They escaped through the fractal core, but one of the Gigashadows long tentacles followed them through, and they ran to the front of the ship in order to escape the black cloud which began to snake through the Lexx. It was hopeless, Stan and Zev both thought. The cloud then took on the form of a face and spoke to Kai, telling him of how it was the last survivor of the Insect civilisation.   
"We have hope." said Kai, to Stan and Zev. "One small hope." Suddenly the cloud appeared to scream in pain. It quickly retreated from them, and the ship was as it always was. Kai sat up, almost looking glad. Squish had saved them by eating into the Gigashadows brain. Now it collided with the fractal core and was destroyed.  
"That's my baby." said Kai.  
  
Stan watched later, as Zev and Kai both went to the cryoroom. Neither said a word, the just sat together with their vials of protoblood. As Stan turned to walk away, he heard Kai's voice, singing.  
"Vay oh ay oh, hum vahya ray, vayoh ay rah, jerum brunnen g..." after two repetitions of this song, he heard Zev's voice join in. Stan couldn't help but wonder how Zev would have felt in life if she had known what was going to happen. She had wanted Kai to get back his feelings, to come to life, so he could be closer to her. And now they had closeness, at the price of dying herself. Maybe it was destiny... that they cold only be truly together in death. Stan ran to his own room, feeling tears in his eyes. Lonliness, that was the most awful thing, he realised. The thing that we would die to end.  
  
The End  
  



End file.
